Sunday and Monday, June 28 and 29. Bangor Diocese and Painswick and London, England.
I have already recounted these days in an earlier post, though without pictures or notes from my first Emerging Church / Fresh Expressions conversation on English soil.
At a little after 9 am on Sunday, I left the small main road for the smaller lane which took me past Eglwys Sant Mihangel (St. Michael's Church) to the church's car park.
To give you some sense of its rural setting, here are two pictures taken from the car park:
The interior of the church is lovely:
For more information about the church and its history, please click here.
Then off to the second church, St. Padarn's, Llanberis, a much larger church built in 1885, when the local slate industry was flourishing.
The setting for St. Padarn's is also beautiful, and this is the last photograph I took in Wales:
By late afternoon I had crossed from Wales into England, and by early evening I was enjoying a delightful reunion and dinner with Ian and Franke Marsh at their home in the Cotswolds.
My Sabbatical focus in England is the Emerging Church, a movement which began in New Zealand, Australia, and the United Kingdom in the early 1990's to bring the Gospel to our post-modern culture. "Fresh Expressions" is part of that larger project. If you were to go to the Fresh Expressions website, you would find this answer to the question, "What is a Fresh Expression?":
"Fresh Expressions was established by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York and the Methodist Council in 2004, with a brief to encourage churches all across the country to establish new congregations and Christian communities through creative and innovative outreach."
"Messy Church," described in an earlier post about the ministry of St. Mark's, Gabalfa, in Wales, is one example of a "Fresh Expression." PSALMS is another example.
PSALMS stands for "Painswick & Stroud Area Local Ministries" and Ian is its Chairman. One of its pamphlets describes PSALMS as "Creating Church 'Out There' " It began as an initiative in the Diocese of Gloucester, to "address the need to reach out to children and young people." And, like another ministry at St. Mark's, it is centered around Sports Ministry.
The pamphlet also quotes from George Barna in Transforming Children: “Up to 85% of Christians make their commitment to Christ between the ages of 4 and 14.”
Here is a picture of Ian and Frankie, who asked me to give their "love and remembrances to all who knew them."
That night, after settling in at St. Michael's House, I walked over toward Parliament Square and realized that the line into Parliament was short. Within about 15 minutes I was wearing a photo ID and sitting in the Stranger's Gallery of the House of Commons, so called because members of the public are strangers to the House. You can't miss the sign "To the Stranger's Gallery" as you climb the stairs to a room which overlooks the House.
I had the privilege and joy of hearing a really good speech by Sir Patrick McCormack MP (Conservative, South Staffordshire). It had all the rhetorical flourishes (at least two quotes from the Latin Classics), wit, and substance that one hopes to hear from a member of the House. On the opposite bench, representing Her Majesty's Government, was Jack Straw, the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice. At the conclusion of the Member's speech, I crossed to the House of Lords, but the tepid speech on UK fisheries hastened my decision to return to St. Matthew's House, post to my Blog, and call it a night!
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